New Tax Year

New Standard

The new HMRC Payroll Standard has been launched for the 2008/2009 tax year. moneyNew logos and options are now featured to enable employers to identify relevance for their needs and purposes.

Following a year of consultation, HMRC has improved the Payroll Standard to be more relevant, applicable and inclusive to the Payroll market and industry. The scope of inclusion has drifted towards larger and more specialised employers and more towards the mainstream software and service providers that the original Inland Revenue Payroll Standard was intended.

Some current standards-compliant products could have been considered as failing the basics of the Payroll Standard requirements themselves, concerning:

  • Requirement for the calculation of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) even for pension payers who have no NICs liability.
  • Requirements of Contracted-Out variations in calculations even for employers who have no contracted-out pension scheme
  • Requirement for Directors' NICs even when the employer has no Directors (such as public sector, charities, partnerships, mutuals, etc).
  • Requirements for the filing of the P35 by the software, when this is an employer obligation and requires additional none-payroll information
  • Requirements for the electronic payment of disbursements to the Collector of Taxes by the payroll software, even if these would normally be handled by a central finance function.
  • Monthly/Weekly employer software was required to also calculate 2 weekly and 4 weekly rules

With extremely capable and feature-rich payroll/pension, services and Bureaus in effect excluded from achieving the former Payroll Standard, and following extensive industry and employer representative consultation, HMRC has revised and enhanced the Payroll Standard to enable it to be more relevant, applicable, and robust for the needs of the Payroll Industry as a whole.

We now have the:

  • Payroll Standard
  • Pensioner Payroll Standard

No longer are pension payrolls required to calculate NICs or Directors' NICs, or deal with payroll frequencies that are irrelevant, yet the providers of such services may now be recognised and listed as meeting this new standard. This must be a positive move for the Pension Payment industry as many of the prior standard-accredited list would fall well short of the Pensioner Payroll requirements.

In the next issue of Ceridian Connection, find out more about the Core standard and optional features of the new Payroll Standard.

If you'd like our experts to take of your Payroll concerns, call us on 0800 0482 737 for further details. printer-friendly formatPrinter-friendly format

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